OLPC:News
LAPTOP NEWS
1. Cambridge MA and Cambridge England: Chris Ball talked with Dafydd Harries and Robert McQueen of Collabora, exchanging smooth audio and video (15FPS) using the XO (See http://www.robot101.net/2006/12/12/telepathy-and-olpc/).
2. Jean Piché and the TamTam team spent much of last week at OLPC in Cambridge. They are making steady progress toward a comprehensive three-stage music suite: a multi-voice instrument (an early version is already part of the current build); a composition tool; and a synthesizer. All three activities will be mesh-enabled, allowing children to create synchronous multi-laptop music.
3. Performance metrics: Chris Ball prepared system-wide profiling data in the build image for several hotspots: rendering a web page; starting a Sugar activity; starting the X Window System. This profiling work will guild our performance efforts.
4. Kernel/drivers: Andres Salomon hand-merged various Libertas fixes (Marvell's wireless driver). He also enabled PREEMPT in our kernels; the goal is to hopefully give the machine a more interactive feel, even when the system is doing lots of work. This should make the people working with sound applications happier as well, as they've been asking for a lower latency kernel.
5. Firmware: Mitch Bradley reports that Q2A71 BIOS and firmware were released this week.
6. Content repository: Ian Bicking spent two productive days at OLPC. He and SJ discussed our internal content repository and content representations, and three related applications: (1) a public “web app” interface to our repository; (2) internal interfaces to the same for system administrators and children, and (3) the Journal interface. The upshot of this is a developing draft of a definition of content and modules, use cases for the repository, and a description of an external community site and portal to support content collaboration (as a way of describing what the repository is not doing and also motivation for anyone interested in filling that gap).
7. Matthew Garrett posted a first patch at resume code for the OLPC for comment and review.
8. James Cameron did some initial range tests of the mesh in the Australian outback (See http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2006-December/003240.html).
9. Brazil did the first test of the XOs, with children. The brazilian television network GLOBO presented this at the main news program of the night: CLICK TO SEE THE VIDEO
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MILESTONES
| Dec. 2006 | Uruguay announced its participation in the project. |
| Nov. 2006 | First B1 machines are built; IDB and OLPC formalize an agreement regarding Latin American and Caribbean education. |
| Oct. 2006 | B-test boards become available; Libya announces plans for one laptop for every child |
| Sep. 2006 | UI designs presented; integrated software build released; SES-Astra joins OLPC |
| Aug. 2006 | Working prototype of the dual-mode display |
| Jun. 2006 | 500 developer boards are shipped worldwide; WiFi operational; Csound demonstrated over the mesh network First video with working prototype [1] |
| May 2006 | eBay joins OLPC; display specs set; A-test boards become available; $100 Server is announced |
| Apr. 2006 | Pre-A test board boots; Squid and FreePlay present first human-power systems |
| Mar. 2006 | Yves Behar and FuseProject are selected as industry designers |
| Feb. 2006 | Marvell joins OLPC and continues to partner on network hardware |
| Jan. 2006 | World Economic Forum, Switzerland UNDP and OLPC Sign Partnership Agreement news release |
| Dec. 2005 | Quanta Computer Inc. to Manufacture Laptop (html)(pdf) |
| Nov. 2005 | WSIS, Tunisia Prototype Unveiled by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan; Nortel joins OLPC Photos: (Image 1)
(Image 2) (Image 3) |
| Aug. 2005 | Design Continuum starts design of first laptop |
| Jul. 2005 | Formal signing of original members of OLPC |
| Mar. 2005 | Brightstar and Red Hat come on board |
| Jan. 2005 | Laptop initiative officially announced at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland; AMD, News Corp. and Google agree to join OLPC |
PRESS
Video
(Misc. videos of the laptop can be found.)
http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/061004-ee380-300.asx | Mark Foster delivers presentation to Standford University
http://www.technologyreview.com/ | Technology Review Mini-Documentary